So I'm sure the tekkies on the forum are already familiar with some Bittorrent sites shutting down. Suprnova being the most widely known. Unlike previous file-sharing clients, these sites shut down when Hollywood announced it was coming after Bittorrent soon, preventing a drawn out process that shut down programs like Napster.

Hollywood, like the music industry, realized the financial loss of illegal downloads and decided to do something about it. A reasonable standpoint from their point of view, there's no doubt about that. And like the attempts from the music industry, does it change anything? Not really.

Sites like Torrentreactor and Demonoid are still going strong. And yes, a time may come when those sites are shut down also. And guess what'll happen? More sites will go up. It's as simple as that. Napster was shut down years ago; smarter p2p clients popped up. Same concept here.

Illegal downloading will never stop. Whether it be music, movies, whatever. Too many people benefit from free software. Who's gonna shell out money for $50 DVD boxed sets when they can download it? Who's gonna pay hundreds of bucks for Office applications or photo editing software? I'm not condoning this, per se. At least not publicly, I'm not.

I saw some threads out on the interweb that want to blame this on America as a whole. Right. I, as an American, have no choice but to agree wholeheartedly with the decisions of corporate entities such as the RIAA and MPAA.

No one likes corporate entities unless they can somehow profit from them, ok? I'm with you, you European asshole, so quit misdirecting your rage.
No one has a right to download movies and music without paying for them, but who cares? I don't.

And there are many more motivated people than me out there who take initiative. For every dead end like Napster, there will be new innovations like BitTorrent. For every suprnova.org in its prime, there will be dozens of fledgling torrent sites.

This won't go away just because some fat, rich, white suits decide that they're going to target a few people.

The coolest thing about them going after Bittorrent is they can't target the people who download. With how bittorrent works, it's impossible. They're gonna target people who send out percents of a percent of a file? It's impossible to target the people based on that, and even if it was, there's no one person you could lay the blame on. Hell, they'll probably blame people anyway and file suit against them. God knows Hollywood can't lose it's precious dollars per movie that isn't purchased. But once again, this is going to have the same mundane effect that the Napster/Kazaa/etc lawsuits had. Sure, some people will get scared and stop. Some websites will shut down. But eventually those people will resume illegal downloads and new websites will pop up. This is just too big to be completely shut down.

Torrents are something I would consider "acceptable loss". The copies of movies still in theaters are usually of deplorable quality. And the copies of DVD movies will never have the special features or video and sound quality of the originals. The invention of the DVD has and will continue to save the movie industry from any real loss.

The music industry has something to complain about, but not much. The majority of my CDs are virtually unplayable due to scratches. These CDs are hard to locate in stores, and even if you can find them, they're overpriced. This is something I've already bought; why am I paying a higher price than I originally did just to get it back?

If they want to stop "losing money" to file sharing, they need to make some concessions.
CDs are an imperfect media. Let me buy a license to the music instead of just buying a hard copy. If the medium I buy it on fails I can get another copy.

Convergence and convenience are key. I want my songs on my PC, Xbox, MiniDisc, and MP3-CD without some stupid secure checkout procedure.

Why is the music industry losing money?

They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars gathering information from various ISPs and data collection agencies to make public relations prosecutions of strategically selected victims where the return is usually less than $3,000. This may have helped a few dozen young Americans go into debt early and grow a lifelong hatred of the RIAA, but it's done nothing to stop me from getting MP3s.

When mainstream movies shifted from VHS to DVD, besides offering superior clarity, the new medium provided myriad new features and options. Movies that I never would have bought on tape, I find myself buying on DVD. DVDs are as scratch-prone as CDs, but you'd have to agree that movies aren't yet as portable as music is, so they're handled less.

What has the music industry done to offer new incentive? CDs are still the skip-prone, limited media they were 15 years ago.

Why doesn't the RIAA do something useful? The main reason DVD-Audio and SACD aren't as successful as they could be is because they're choking each other out! Why not step in and in an FCC-like manner declare an official next-generation medium? (Granted, the movie [and game] industry is being equally stupid with Blue-Ray and DVD-HD technologies, but they're not in the same funk as the music industry)

So here we are, hearing the same tired argument from the RIAA, and they've yet to offer any real incentive, aside from fear, for file sharers to quit.

jeff wrote:Your sentence structure is questionable. And I don't feel like looking up Wigan. Try again?

Sorry I think I got it right now. Wigan (I can't remember his first name) worked on a research project for a "safer cigarette" in his research and provided materials given to him by the tobacco companies he learned the truth about cigarettes and such forth, he released the information to the public, to congress, to anywhere he could. The tobacco companies threatened his life, one being the bullet in the mailbox. I guess I was putting an analogy behind the possibility of the RIAA pulling illegal stunts (such as domain hacking) to shut such a site down or show them up.

And I'm not really sure if Wigan is the guys last name, all I know is that it's close.